1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to providing enhanced service levels for call-processing services, for example during calls between subscribers to the call-processing service.
2. Description of the Related Art
With recent advances in telecommunications technology, service providers are providing more and more complex call-processing services to their subscribers. For example, call-processing services that are available to residential phone subscribers can include answering machine service, caller ID, call waiting, call forwarding, call blocking, and three-way calling, to name just a few. Furthermore, the advent of call handling and call-processing by technologies other than the public switched telephone network (PSTN) has enabled additional call-processing services. Internet answering machine, Internet call waiting, fax-to-email, and voice over IP are just a few examples.
Providers of these call-processing services typically generate revenue by selling these services. The more services that subscribers buy; the more revenue is generated for the service provider. For convenience, the bundle of services purchased by a subscriber shall be referred to as the subscriber's service level. The service level for different subscribers can differ not only in which services are subscribed to, but also the quality of the particular service. As an example of the former, one subscriber might purchase Internet answering machine and fax-to-email, whereas another only purchases Internet answering machine. As an example of the latter, one subscriber might purchase Internet answering machine with a voice mailbox size of 10 minutes and maximum length of 30 seconds per voice mail, and another might purchase Internet answering machine with a voice mailbox size of 30 minutes and maximum voice mail length of 60 seconds.
In order to generate more revenue, service providers generally desire to enroll new subscribers and/or upgrade the service levels for existing subscribers. One way that service providers attempt to do this is by advertising. Advertising campaigns announcing the roll out of new services, attempts to generate media coverage or buzz for certain services, and ad placements in traditional media are all attempts to obtain new subscribers and/or to persuade existing subscribers to upgrade their service levels. However, advertising can be expensive and its effectiveness is not always apparent.
When multiple service providers offer similar services, service providers often will also want to differentiate subscription to their service from subscription to the other services. Service providers will want to somehow make their subscriptions “sticky” in order to prevent subscribers from switching to other service providers. In recent years, some telecommunications service providers have introduced billing plans that are favorable to their subscribers. For example, T-Mobile offers a wireless service where there is no per-minute charge if the calling party and the called party both subscribe to T-Mobile. However, although the pricing depends on whether both parties subscribe to T-Mobile, the actual service level does not.
Adding to these impediments, subscribers may not realize that they want a service until they actually try it. For example, a subscriber may believe he does not need fax-to-email because he does not receive that many faxes and therefore does not need email notification and/or email delivery of the faxes. He may be content to wait until he returns to the office to pick up any faxes sent to him. However, once he tries fax-to-email, he may find that the service is actually very useful to him, for example perhaps because the email-based fax delivery service is more secure or perhaps because he receives more faxes due to the convenience of the service. Service providers have offered free or reduced rate trial periods where subscribers can try new services. However, this still requires the subscriber to take the initiative of signing up for the trial period. It can also require significant resources from the service provider just to set up and administer the trial.
Thus, there is a need for new approaches to call-processing services that provide greater value to subscribers who sign up for higher service levels. There is also a need for new approaches to enroll new subscribers and to encourage existing subscribers to upgrade their service levels.